As you’re all no doubt aware, this month the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) announced some significant changes to their funding rules (Approval of Qualifications for Public Funding for Adult Learners). These changes may result in the removal of public funding for a number of adult qualifications in 2014/15. We understand that you’ll be concerned about these changes and we want to let you know how NCFE is responding.
We’re adopting a number of approaches, looking at each affected qualification individually. There are several courses of actions open to us. For some qualifications, we’ve chosen to appeal. In fact, we’ve already proactively put in an appeal for certain qualifications, where we feel that the loss of public funding will have a strong adverse effect on specific cohorts of learners. Thanks to those of you who’ve helped us with this by providing letters of support for qualifications (with this in mind, we may be getting in touch with more of you in the coming months to support further appeals!)
The qualifications we are currently appealing are:
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Understanding the Safe Handling of Medicines (501/0037/3)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Mental Health Awareness (600/6134/0)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Understanding End of Life Care (600/9523/4)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Customer Service Knowledge (600/1772/7)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Nutrition and Health (600/9966/5)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Principles of Business and Administration (501/1224/7)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Creative Craft (501/0881/5)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Working in Mental Health (600/6133/9)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Retail Knowledge (600/2139/1)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Cleaning Principles (601/0791/1)
NCFE Level 2 Certificate in Contact Centre Operations (600/1292/4)
In the case of other qualifications, we’ve taken this opportunity to re-evaluate them and we may choose to amend them if we feel that this is the right thing to do. We’ll be working closely with both employers and our key partners to ensure that these qualifications remain fit for purpose and meet the needs of learners and the labour market.
The great thing is that NCFE is agile enough to be flexible and adapt quickly to these changes to ensure that they affect you, our customers, as little as possible.
We have a number of new qualifications which do meet the new criteria which we’ll be submitting to the SFA for funding approval as soon as possible. And of course, there’s a large range of NCFE qualifications which remain unaffected by these changes such as our Apprenticeship qualifications and our units which are available for individual registration and certification.
Learners are at the heart of all we do and we continued to be committed to providing them with fundable, accessible qualifications which promote achievement, success and progression. We’ll be adopting a customer-centric approach when it comes to how we deal with these changes and will be keeping you informed every step of the way.
If you have any queries, you can get in touch with our dedicated team on 0191 239 8000 or by emailing [email protected] – we’d be more than happy to help. To stay up to date with these developments, keep checking the Qualification News section of our website.
